Many different languages are spoken in Mexico. They are from seven distinct language families and there are two isolates. The total of languages amounts to around 68 and 350 dialects, with a large majority of the population fluent in Spanish while some Indigenous Mexicans are monolingual in indigenous languages. Today, Mexicans predominantly speak Spanish.

The government of Mexico uses Spanish for most official purposes, but in terms of legislation, its status is not that of an official primary language. The Law of Linguistic Rights establishes Spanish as one of the country's national languages, along with 68 distinct indigenous languages (from seven different families, and four other isolated languages). The law, promulgated in 2003, requires the state to offer all of its services to its indigenous citizens in their mother tongues, but in practice this is not yet the case. Note that the actual number of spoken languages in Mexico is much higher than the 68 groups mentioned here; National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI) identifies only macro-languages and distinct ethnic groups for the purposes of political classification. For instance, Mixtec is identified as a single language within this list of 68 languages. However, there are at least 12 distinct Mixtec dialect regions, each which includes a language that is not mutually intelligible with the other dialect regions (Josserand, 1983). The Ethnologue currently states that 287 distinct languages are currently spoken in Mexico (Lewis et al. 2013).

Due to the long history of marginalization of indigenous groups, most indigenous languages are endangered, with some languages expected to become extinct within years or decades, and others simply having populations that grow slower than the national average. According to the Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI) and National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), while 10–14% of the population identifies as belonging to an indigenous group, around 6% speak an indigenous language.

There are other languages not native to Mexico that are spoken in the country, the most common being English.

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A page of the Florentine Codex written in romanized Nahuatl (Nahuatl is not known to have been a written language prior to its romanization).

From the arrival of the first Franciscan missionaries, Spanish, Latin, and indigenous languages played parts in the evangelization of Mexico. Many sixteenth-century churchmen studied indigenous languages in order to instruct native peoples in Christian doctrine. The same men also found Castilian and Latin appropriate in certain contexts. All told, there existed a kind of "linguistic coexistence" from the beginning of the colonial period.[1]

Some monks and priests attempted to describe and classify indigenous languages with Spanish. Philip II of Spain decreed in 1570 that Nahuatl become the official language of the colonies of New Spain in order to facilitate communication between the natives of the colonies.[2]

In 1696 Charles II reversed that policy and banned the use of any languages other than Spanish throughout New Spain.[2] Beginning in the 18th century, decrees ordering the Hispanization of indigenous populations became more numerous and Mexican colonizers no longer learned the indigenous languages.

After the independence the government initiated an educational system with the primary aim of Hispanization of the native populations. This policy was based on the idea that this would help the indigenous peoples become a more integrated part of the new Mexican nation.[3][4]

In 1889, Antonio García Cubas estimated that 38% of Mexicans spoke an indigenous language, down from 60% in 1820. By the end of the 20th century, this figure had fallen to 6%.

For most of the 20th century successive governments denied native tongues the status of valid languages. Indigenous students were forbidden to speak their native languages in school and were often punished for doing so.[3][4][5][6][7][8]

In 2002, Mexico's constitution was amended to reinforce the nation's pluricultural nature by giving the State the obligation to protect and nurture the expressions of this diversity. On June 14, 1999, the Council of Writers in Indigenous Languages presented Congress with a document entitled "Suggested legal initiatives towards linguistic rights of indigenous peoples and communities", with the goal of beginning to protect the linguistic rights of indigenous communities. The Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas was passed in March 2003, establishing a framework for the conservation, nurturing and development of indigenous languages. Critics claim that the law's complexity makes enforcement difficult.[9][10][11][12][13]

Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by the vast majority of Mexicans, though it is not defined as an official language in legislation. The second article of the 1917 Constitution defines the country as multicultural, recognizes the right of the indigenous peoples to "preserve and enrich their languages" and promotes "bilingual and intercultural education".

In 2003, the Mexican Congress approved the General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, which recognizes that Mexico's history makes its indigenous languages, "national languages".[14] Accordingly, they "have the same validity [as Spanish] in their territory, location and context". At the same time, legislators made no specific provisions for the official or legal status of the Spanish language. This law means that indigenous peoples can use their native language in communicating with government officials and request official documents in that language. The Mexican state supports the preservation and promotion of the use of the national languages through the activities of the National Institute of Indigenous Languages.[15][16][17]

Mexico has about six million citizens who speak indigenous languages. That is the second-largest group in the Americas after Peru. However, a relatively small percentage of Mexico's population speaks an indigenous language compared to other countries in the Americas, such as Guatemala (42.8%), Peru (35%), and even Ecuador (9.4%), Panama (8.3%),[18]Paraguay and Bolivia.

The only single indigenous language spoken by more than a million people in Mexico is the Nahuatl language; the other Native American language with a large population of native speakers include Yucatec Maya.

According to the Law of Linguistic Rights, Mexico recognizes sixty-two indigenous languages as co-official National languages [19] with Spanish being the dominant language, Mexico has become a site for endangered languages. "Indigenous people’s disadvantaged socioeconomic status and the pressure of assimilation into mestizo or Ladino society have been influential on indigenous language loss."[20] The result of the conflict between indigenous languages and Spanish has been a language shift in Mexico from indigenous languages being spoken to more people using Spanish in every domain. Due to this situation there have been many different language revitalization strategies put in place in Mexico to try to reverse this language shift. See literature on projects done with the Nahua people [21] and the experiences of language revitalization in the South of Mexico.[22]

As far as second languages go, many educated Mexicans (and those with little education who have immigrated to the US and returned) have different degrees of fluency in English. Many Mexicans working in the tourist industry can speak some English.

^Yoshioka, Hirotoshi (2010-01-01). "INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE AND MAINTENANCE PATTERNS AMONG INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE ERA OF NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM IN MEXICO AND GUATEMALA". Latin American Research Review. 45 (3): 5–34. JSTOR40926268.

1.
Nahuatl
–
Nahuatl, known historically as Aztec, is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua peoples, all Nahuan languages are indigenous to Mesoamerica. Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE and it was the language of the Aztecs who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl, today, Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along the coastline. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are mutually unintelligible, Huasteca Nahuatl, with over one million speakers, is the most-spoken variety. They have all been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish, No modern Nahuan languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery. Nahuan languages exhibit a complex morphology characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination, through a very long period of coexistence with the other indigenous Mesoamerican languages, they have absorbed many influences, coming to form part of the Mesoamerican language area. Many words from Nahuatl have been borrowed into Spanish, and since diffused into hundreds of other languages, most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexico which the Spanish heard mentioned for the first time by their Nahuatl names. English words of Nahuatl origin include avocado, chayote, chili, chocolate, atlatl, coyote, peyote, axolotl, as a language label, the term Nahuatl encompasses a group of closely related languages or divergent dialects within the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas recognize 30 different individual varieties within the language group labeled Nahuatl, the Ethnologue recognizes 28 varieties with separate ISO codes. Sometimes the label also is used to include the Pipil language of El Salvador, within Mexico the question of whether to consider individual varieties to be languages or dialects of a single language is highly political. This article focuses on describing the history of the group. For details on individual varieties or subgroups, see the individual articles, in the past, the branch of Uto-Aztecan to which Nahuatl belongs has been called Aztecan. From the 1990s onward, the alternative designation Nahuan has been used as a replacement especially in Spanish-language publications. The Nahuan branch of Uto-Aztecan is widely accepted as having two divisions, General Aztec and Pochutec, General Aztec encompasses the Nahuatl and Pipil languages. Pochutec is a scantily attested language, which became extinct in the 20th century, other researchers have argued that Pochutec should be considered a divergent variant of the western periphery. Nahuatl denotes at least Classical Nahuatl together with related languages spoken in Mexico. The inclusion of Pipil into the group is debated, current subclassification of Nahuatl rests on research by Canger, Canger and Lastra de Suárez

2.
Mexico
–
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan

3.
Main language
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A national language is a that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with people and the territory they occupy. There is little consistency in the use of this term, one or more languages spoken as first languages in the territory of a country may be referred to informally or designated in legislation as national languages of the country. National and/or official languages are mentioned in over 150 world constitutions, the last is usually given the title of official language. Standard languages, such as Standard German, Standard French, and Standard Spanish, may serve as national, regional, National language and official language are best understood as two concepts or legal categories with ranges of meaning that may coincide, or may be intentionally separate. Stateless nations are not in the position to legislate an official language, some languages may be recognized popularly as national languages, while others may enjoy official recognition in use and/or promotion. Albanian is the language in Albania and Kosovo and a regional national language for parts of Macedonia. Arabic is the language in Algeria. Berber is also an official language, French has no official status but is widely used in education, business and the media. Andorras national language is Catalan, moreover Catalan is a language in several territories in Spain. Azerbaijan Azerbaijani language is the language in Azerbaijan. Australia has no language, but is largely monolingual with English being the de facto national language. A considerable proportion of first and second generation migrants are bilingual, according to Ethnologue, 81% of people spoke English at home, including L2 speakers. Other languages spoken at home included Chinese 2. 9%, Italian 1. 2%, Arabic 1. 1%, Greek 1%, Vietnamese 0. 9%, there were almost 400 languages spoken by Indigenous Australians prior to the arrival of Europeans. Only about 70 of these languages have survived and all but 30 of these are now endangered, bengali is the sole official language of Bangladesh. Bulgarian is the language in Bulgaria. Canadas official languages since the Official Languages Act of 1969 are English, Quebec nationalists consider Quebec French the national language of the Quebec nation. As well, two of Canadas northern territories legislate a variety of Indigenous languages, as these official languages are legislated at a territorial level, they can be construed as national languages. Notably the Cree language is spoken from Alberta to Labrador, Anishinaabemowin is spoken across central Canada, there are many languages spoken across China, with most people speaking one of several varieties of Chinese

4.
Mexican Spanish
–
Mexican Spanish is a set of varieties of the Spanish language as spoken in Mexico and in some parts of the United States and Canada. Spanish was brought to Mexico in the 16th century, as in all other Spanish-speaking countries, different accents and varieties of the language exist in different parts of the country, for both historical and sociological reasons. For this reason, most of the film dubbing identified abroad with the label Mexican Spanish or Latin American Spanish actually corresponds to the central Mexican variety, Mexico City was built on the site of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. The territory of contemporary Mexico is not coextensive with what might be termed Mexican Spanish, the Spanish spoken in the southernmost state of Chiapas, bordering Guatemala, resembles the variety of Central American Spanish spoken in that country, where voseo is used. Meanwhile, to the north, many Mexicans stayed in Texas after its independence from Mexico, the Spanish spoken in the Gulf coastal areas of Veracruz and Tabasco and in the states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo exhibits more Caribbean phonetic traits than that spoken in the rest of Mexico. And the Spanish of the Yucatán Peninsula is distinct from all forms in its intonation. For example, the intonation of some varieties of Mexican Spanish is said to be influenced by that of indigenous languages, even words of Greek and Latin origin with ⟨tl⟩, such as Atlántico and atleta, are pronounced with the affricate. In addition to the voiceless fricatives of other American Spanish dialects, Mexican Spanish also has the palatal sibilant /ʃ/. The /ʃ/, represented orthographically as ⟨x⟩, is found in words of Nahuatl or Mayan origin. The spelling ⟨x⟩ can additionally represent the phoneme /x/, as in México itself, or /s/, as in the place name Xochimilco—as well as the /ks/ sequence, in many Nahuatl words in which ⟨x⟩ originally represented, the pronunciation has changed to —e. g. Jalapa/Xalapa. Regarding the pronunciation of the phoneme /x/, the articulation in most of Mexico is velar, however, in some dialects of southern Mexico, the normal articulation is glottal. Thus, in dialects, México, Jalapa, and caja are respectively pronounced. In dialects of Oaxaca, much of Chiapas and the southern Highland and interior regions and this is identical to the Mayan pronunciation of the dorsal fricative which, unlike the Spanish romanization ⟨x⟩, in Mayan languages is commonly represented orthographically by ⟨j⟩. All varieties of Mexican Spanish are characterized by yeísmo, the letters ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩ correspond to the same phoneme, /j/. That phoneme, in most variants of Mexican Spanish, is pronounced as either a fricative or an approximant in most cases. Also present in most of the interior of Mexico is the preservation of syllable-final /s/, dialects of both the Pacific and the Gulf Coast have received more influences from Andalusian and Canarian Spanish dialects. Like most Spanish dialects and varieties, Mexican Spanish has five vowels, a striking feature of Mexican Spanish, particularly that of central Mexico, is the high rate of reduction and even elision of unstressed vowels, as in /ˈtɾasts/. This process is most frequent when a vowel is in contact with the phoneme /s/ and it can be the case that the words pesos, pesas, and peces are pronounced the same /ˈpesəs/

5.
Indigenous language
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An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people, often reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages, and the reverse is also true, many indigenous languages are disappearing as there are no longer any young people left to speak those languages, so their remaining speakers are dying out. In North America, since 1600 at least 52 Native American languages have disappeared and it is estimated that 6,809 living languages exist in the world today, but 90% of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people. Some languages are close to disappearing. Forty six languages are known to have just one native speaker while 357 languages have fewer than 50 speakers, rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than more common ones. Of those languages, this means that roughly 6,100 languages are facing a risk of extinction, Oklahoma provides the backdrop for an example of language loss in the developed world. It boasts the highest density of languages in the United States. This includes languages spoken in the region, as well as those of Native American tribes from other areas that were forcibly relocated onto reservations there. The U. S. government drove the Yuchi from Tennessee to Oklahoma in the early 19th century, until the early 20th century, most Yuchi tribe members spoke the language fluently. Then, government boarding schools severely punished American Indian students who were speaking their own language. To avoid beatings and other punishments, Yuchi, and other Indian children abandoned their languages in favor of English. In 2005, only five members of the Yuchi tribe were fluent in the language. These remaining speakers spoke Yuchi fluently before they went to school and have maintained the language despite strong pressure to abandon it and this situation was not limited to Oklahoma. In the Northwest Pacific plateau there are no speakers left of the tribal languages from that area. Oregons Siletz reservation, established in 1855, was home to the endangered language Siletz Dee-ni, the reservation held members of 27 different Indian bands speaking many languages. In order to communicate, people adopted Chinook Jargon, a pidgin or hybrid language, between the use of Chinook Jargon and the increased presence of English, the number of speakers of indigenous languages dwindled. Other tribes of Native Americans were also forced into government schools and they were also treated badly if they did not become civilized

6.
Zapotec language
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The 2010 Mexican census reports 425,000 speakers, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca. Zapotec-speaking communities are found in the neighboring states of Puebla, Veracruz. Labor migration has brought a number of native Zapotec-speakers to the United States, particularly in California and Bridgeton. Most Zapotec speaking communities are highly bilingual in Spanish, the name of the language in Zapotec itself varies according to the geographical variant. The first part of these expressions has the meaning word, Zapotec and the related Chatino languages together form the Zapotecan subgroup of the Oto-Manguean language family. Zapotec languages form part of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area, an area of linguistic convergence developed throughout millennia of interaction between the peoples of Mesoamerica, as a result, languages have acquired characteristics from genetically unrelated languages of the area. Although commonly described as a language, Zapotec is an extensive, if close-knit. The time depth is comparable to that of the Romance languages, dialectal divergence between Zapotec-speaking communities is extensive and complicated. Many varieties of Zapotec are mutually unintelligible with one other, as a result, the Mexican government officially recognizes sixty Zapotec languages. Zapotec languages fall into four geographic divisions, Zapoteco de la Sierra Norte, Valley Zapotec, Zapoteco de la Sierra Sur. However, Valley Zapotec and Isthmus Zapotec group together, and this ignores the Papabuco, certain characteristics serve to classify Zapotec varieties in ways that cross-cut the geographical divisions. One of these is the distinction between disyllabic roots and monosyllabic roots and it is clear that proto-Zapotec had disyllabic roots, the vowel of the second syllable could be any one of the inventory of vowels. One innovation shared by many varieties of Zapotec is the loss of the vowel of the second syllable, the word for water illustrates this fact. In conservative varieties, the vowel of the syllable is retained, /nisa/ in Isthmus Zapotec and /inda/ in Sierra de Juárez Zapotec. In innovative varieties, the vowel of the syllable was lost, /nis/ in Amatlán Zapotec and Mitla Zapotec. The loss of the vowel /i/ often resulted in palatalized consonants, compare the words for dog in conservative varieties and innovative varieties. In this particular word Amatlán does not have a consonant at the end. Another characteristic that classifies Zapotec varieties is the existence or not of a contrast between alveopalatal fricatives and retroflex fricatives, innovative varieties have introduced the contrast while conservative varieties have not

7.
Mixtec language
–
The Mixtec /ˈmiːʃtɛk/ languages belong to the Otomanguean language family of Mexico, and are closely related to the Trique and Cuicatec languages. They are spoken by half a million people. Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this dialect continuum poses challenges at the level of linguistic theory. Depending on the criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages, there may be as many as fifty Mixtec languages, the name Mixteco is a Nahuatl exonym, from cloud inhabitant of place of. The traditional range of the Mixtec languages is the known as La Mixteca. The Mixtec language is a set of regional dialects which were already in place at the time of the Spanish Conquest of the Mixteca region. The varieties of Mixtec are sometimes grouped by area, using designations such as those of the Mixteca Alta, the Mixteca Baja. However, the dialects do not actually follow the geographic areas, the number of varieties of Mixtec depends in part on what the criteria are for grouping them, of course, at one extreme, government agencies once recognized no dialectal diversity. Mutual intelligibility surveys and local programs have led SIL International to identify more than 50 varieties which have been assigned distinct ISO codes. Attempts to carry out programs in Mixtec which cross these dialect boundaries have not met with great success. The varieties of Mixtec have functioned as de facto separate languages for hundreds of years with none of the characteristics of a single language. The simple presentation of the phonemes of Mixtec is complicated by the significant internal diversity to this language or family of languages, the table below shows the phonemic inventory of a selected Mixtec language, Chalcotongo Mixtec. Not all varieties of Mixtec have the sibilant /s/, some do not have the interdental fricative /ð/. Some do not have the velar fricative /x/, a few have the affricate /ts/. By some analyses, the sounds /m/ and /w/ are allophones conditioned by nasalization, as are /n/ and /nᵈ/, also /ɲ/, one of the most characteristic features of Mixtec is its use of tones, a characteristic it shares with all other Otomanguean languages. Despite its importance in the language, the analyses of Mixtec have been many. Some varieties of Mixtec display complex tone sandhi and it is commonly claimed that Mixtec distinguishes three different tones, high, middle, and low. In the practical writing systems the representation of tone has been somewhat varied and it does not have a high functional load generally, although in some languages tone is all that indicates different aspects and distinguishes affirmative from negative verbs

8.
Tzeltal language
–
Tzeltal is one of many Mayan languages spoken near this eastern region of Chiapas, including Tzotzil, Chol, and Tojolabal, among others. There is also a small Tzeltal diaspora in parts of Mexico. It is a language with some 371,730 speakers as of 2005. Tzeltal forms, together with the Tzotzil language, a branch of the Mayan languages, called Tzeltalan, all these languages are the most spoken Mayan languages in Chiapas today. Historically, the branches are believed to have split about 1,400 years ago, also, some researchers believe that the Tzeltal language has been spoken as far away as in Guatemala. While Greenberg groups Tzeltal with the proposed Penutian superfamily, this hypothesis is not well attested, the Ethnologue classifies Tzeltal as a 5 out of 10 on its scale of endangerment status, and additionally describes its use as vigorous. Nevertheless, its usage is almost exclusively oral, schools rarely incorporate Tzeltal materials, Tzeltal language programming is carried out by the CDIs radio station XEVFS, broadcasting from Las Margaritas, Chiapas. In 2013, Pope Francis approved translations of the prayers for Mass, the translations include the prayers used for Mass, marriage, baptisms, confirmations, confessions, ordinations and the anointing of the sick. Bishop Arizmendi said Oct.6 that the texts, which took eight years to translate, would be used in his diocese. Mass has been celebrated in the diocese in recent years with the assistance of translators -- except during homilies -- Bishop Arizmendi said in an article in the newspaper La Jornada. The phonology of Tzeltal is quite straightforward with a vowel inventory. Some phonological processes do occur, however, including assimilation, epenthesis, Tzeltal has 5 vowels, Whether vowel length is phonemic distinctive in Tzeltal is debatable. Tzeltal has 21 consonants, including the glottal stop, phonemic charts representing this dialect would include but not. In this dialect, suffixes carrying b often may be realized as, in the initial position of a suffix following a consonant, it is realized as the true stop, but in the postvocalic position it is preceded by a glottal stop, such that chabek sounds like chabek. When is found in the position, it can be pronounced as, or even disappear completely, thus cheb could sound like cheb, chem. When a vowel is found in the context, the vowel is pronounced with creaky voice, contraction may occur with consecutive identical phonemes, either at a word- or morpheme-boundary. For example, the word /ta atel/ may be pronounced, the two phonemes having been pronounced as one, the phoneme may undergo a number of processes depending on context and dialect. In most dialects, most notably that of Bachajón, word-final is very light and in rapid speech often disappears entirely if not protected by some other element

9.
Tzotzil language
–
Tzotzil /ˈsoʊtsɪl, ˈtsoʊt-/ is a Maya language spoken by the indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Most speakers are bilingual in Spanish as a second language, in Central Chiapas, some primary schools and a secondary school are taught in Tzotzil. Tzeltal is the most closely related language to Tzotzil and together form a Tzeltalan sub-branch of the Mayan language family. Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol are the most widely spoken languages in Chiapas, centro de Lengua, Arte y Literatura Indígena suggested in 2002 that the name of the language should be spelled Tsotsil, rather than Tzotzil. Native speakers and writers of the language are picking up the habit of using s instead of z, O and u fluctuate between rounded and unrounded, some have proposed spelling the unrounded vowels as ö and ü respectively. Before a glottalized consonant, a appears to lengthen and tense. /v/ may be unvoiced pronounced as the voiceless when in a consonant cluster or in fast speech, /b/ is frequently implosive, especially when intervocalic or in initial position. It is also weakly glottalized in initial position, /kʰ pʰ tʰ/ are more strongly aspirated in final position. /w d f ɡ/ occur as well, but only in loanwords, aspirated and ejective consonants form phonemic contrasts, for example, kok, kok, and kok all have different meanings. All words in Tzotzil begin with a consonant, consonant clusters are permissible, almost always found at the beginning of a word and consisting of a prefix together with a root. Roots in Tzotzil occur in the forms CVC, CV, CVCVC, CVVC, CVC-CVC, the most common root is CVC. Almost all Tzotzil words can be analyzed as a CVC root together with certain affixes, in normal speech, stress falls on the first syllable of the root in each word and the last word in a phrase is heavily stressed. For words in isolation, primary stress falls on the syllable except in affective verbs with -luh, first person plural exclusive suffixes. In these instances the stress is unpredictable and is indicated with an acute accent. The Tzotzil variant of San Bartolomé de Los Llanos, in the Venustiano Carranza region, was analyzed as having two phonemic tones by Sarles 1966, research by Heriberto Avelino in 2009 was not able to confirm more than an unstable and incipient tone contrast. When intervocalic, /b/ is pre-glottalized and when it is followed by a consonant, for example, ta ssut He is returning is pronounced. Nouns can take affixes of possession, reflexive relation, independent state, number, plural suffix for possessed nouns, linked with possessive prefixes, s-chikin-ik his/her/their ears, k-ichak-t-ik our fingernails -et-ik. Plural suffix for non-possessed nouns, vitz-et-ik hills, mut-et-ik birds -t-ak and they cannot be used without a possessive prefix, or otherwise must be used with an absolute suffix to express an indefinite possessor

10.
Otomi language
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Otomi is a group of closely related indigenous languages of Mexico, spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the central altiplano region of Mexico. It belongs to the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean language family and it is a dialect continuum of closely related languages, because many of the varieties are not mutually intelligible. The word Hñähñu has been proposed as an endonym, but since it represents the usage of a single dialect it has not gained wide currency, like all other Oto-Manguean languages, Otomi is a tonal language and most varieties distinguish three tones. Nouns are marked only for possessor, plural number is marked with an article and by a verbal suffix. Verb morphology can be described as either fusional or agglutinating depending on the analysis, in verb inflection, infixation, consonant mutation, and apocope are prominent processes, and the number of irregular verbs is large. The grammatical subject in a sentence is cross-referenced by a class of morphemes that can be analysed as either proclitics or prefixes, verbs are inflected for either direct object or dative object by suffixes. Grammar also distinguishes between inclusive we and exclusive we, several codices and grammars were composed in Classical Otomi. A negative stereotype of the Otomi promoted by the Nahuas and perpetuated by the Spanish resulted in a loss of status for the Otomi, the name Otomi comes from the Nahuatl otomitl, which is possibly derived from an older word totomitl shooter of birds. It is not an Otomi endonym, the Otomi refer to their language as Hñähñú, Hñähño, Hñotho, Hñähü, Hñätho, Hyųhų, Yųhmų, Ñųhų, most of the variant forms are composed of two morphemes meaning speak and well, respectively. The word Otomi entered the Spanish language through Nahuatl and is used to describe the larger Otomi macroethnic group, from Spanish the word Otomi has become entrenched in the linguistic and anthropological literature. The Oto-Pamean languages are thought to have split from the other Oto-Manguean languages around 3500 BC, within the Otomian branch, Proto-Otomi seems to have split from Proto-Mazahua ca.500 AD. Around 1000 AD, Proto-Otomi began diversifying into the modern Otomi varieties, the Precolumbian Otomi people did not have a fully developed writing system, but the largely ideographic Aztec writing could be read in Otomi as well as Nahuatl. The Otomi often translated names of places or rulers into Otomi rather than using the Nahuatl names, for example, the Nahuatl place name Tenochtitlān, place of Opuntia cactus, was rendered as *ʔmpôndo in proto-Otomi, with the same meaning. At the time of the Spanish conquest of central Mexico, Otomi had a wider distribution than now, with large Otomi speaking areas existing in the modern states of Jalisco. After the conquest, the Otomi people experienced a period of expansion as the Spaniards employed Otomi warriors in their expeditions of conquest into northern Mexico. During and after the Mixtón rebellion, in which Otomi warriors fought for the Spanish, Otomis settled areas in Querétaro, Classical Otomi is the term used to define the Otomi spoken in the early centuries of colonial rule. This historical stage of the language was given Latin orthography and documented by Spanish friars who learned it in order to proselytize among the Otomi, text in Classical Otomi is not readily comprehensible, since the Spanish-speaking friars failed to differentiate the varied vowel and consonant phonemes used in Otomi. In 1605, Alonso de Urbano wrote a trilingual Spanish-Nahuatl-Otomi dictionary, the grammarian of Nahuatl, Horacio Carochi, is known to have written a grammar of Otomi, but no copies have survived

11.
Mazahua language
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The Mazahua language is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken in the countrys central states by the ethnic group widely known as the Mazahua but who refer to themselves as Hñatho. Mazahua is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits which define the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area, the largest concentration of Mazahua is found in the municipality of San Felipe del Progreso, State of México, near Toluca. Mazahua is a language and distinguishes high, low, and falling tones on all syllables except the final syllable of a word. Mazahuas most distinctive feature is its abnormally large phoneme inventory, which totals around sixty phonemes, there are eight vowel phonemes, seven contrastive nasal vowels, and as many as forty-five consonants. Amongst these are ejectives, implosives and contrastive voiceless sonorants, along with Sindhi and Tukang Besi, Mazahua is a rare case of a language with true implosives far isolated from regions where implosives are commonly encountered. It is also one of the few languages with ejective fricatives, mazahua-language programming is carried by the CDIs radio station XETUMI-AM, broadcasting from Tuxpan, Michoacán

12.
Mazatec language
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The group is often described as a single language called Mazatec, but because several varieties are not mutually intelligible, they are better described as a group of languages. The languages belong to the Popolocan subgroup of the Oto-Manguean language family, under the Law of Linguistic Rights they are recognized as national languages along with the other indigenous languages of Mexico and Spanish. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, the Mazatecan languages are tonal, the Mazatecan languages are part of the Oto-Manguean language family and belong to the familys Eastern branch. In that branch, they belong to the Popolocan subgroup together with the Popoloca, Ixcatec, brinton was the first to propose a classification of the Mazatec languages, which he correctly grouped with the Zapotec and Mixtec languages. In 1892 he second-guessed his own previous classification and suggested that Mazatec was in fact related to Chiapanec-Mangue, subsequent work by Summer Institute linguist Sarah Gudschinsky gave a full reconstruction first of Proto-Mazatec and then of Proto-Popolocan-Mazatecan. The ISO 639-3 standard enumerates eight Mazatecan languages and they are named after the villages they are spoken in, Chiquihuitlán Mazatec Central Huautla Mazatec. The Huautla, Ayautla, and Mazatlán varieties are about 80% mutually intelligible, Tecóatl, Jalapa, Ixcatlán, in 2005 there were 200,000 speakers of Mazatecan languages according to INEGI. Approximately 80% of these speakers know and use Spanish for some purposes, however, many Mazatec children know little or no Spanish when they enter school. The language is divided into dialects, or varieties, some of which are not mutually intelligible. The Highland and Lowland dialects differ by a number of sound changes shared by each of the groups, there was another issue where the high dialects of Huautla and Jiotes used sh along with the low dialects of San Miguel, Jalapa, and Ixatlan. The use of sh in both dialects actually corresponded with ch which was used in the dialects of Tecoatl, Eloxochitlan, San Mateo. This issue concluded with the notion that sh and ch were reflexes of Proto-Poplocan, the San Miguel Huautla dialect occupies an intermediary position sharing traits with both groups. The division between highland and lowland dialects corresponds to the division between highland and lowland territories which existed in the period between CE1300 and 1519. During the period of Aztec dominance from 1456 to 1519, the Highland territory was ruled from Teotitlán del Camino and the territory from Tuxtepec. The Valley dialects underwent a change of /*n/ to /ɲ/ in sequences with a /vowel-hn-a/ or /vowel-hn-u/, the Valley dialects then separated into Southern and Northern valley dialects. The Southern dialects changed /*tʲ/ to /t/ before /*k/, whereas the Northern dialects changed /t͡ʃ/ to /t͡ʂ/ before /*/a, the dialect of Ixcatlán then separated from the one of Soyaltepec by changing sequences of /*tʲk/ and /*tk/ to /tik/ and /tuk/, respectively. The Highland dialects split into Western and Eastern groups, in the Western dialects the sequence /*ʃk/ changed to /sk/ whereas the Eastern ones changed it to /hk/. The dialect of Huautla de Jimenez then changed sequences of /*tʲh/ to *ʃ before short vowels, the following review of a Mazatecan phoneme inventory will be based on the description of the Jalapa de Díaz variety published by Silverman, Blankenship et al

13.
Chinantec language
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The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean family. Though traditionally considered a language, Ethnologue lists 14 partially mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinantec. Egland and Bartholomew established fourteen Chinantec languages on the basis of 80% mutual intelligibility, Ethnologue found that one that had not been adequately compared was not distinct, but split another. A typical Chinantecan phoneme inventory distinguishes 7 vowels /i, e, vowels can be nasalized, except usually /u/ and /ø/. Chinantec is a language and some dialects have five register tones. In the practical orthographies for Chinantec, tones are marked with superscript numbers after each syllable, Chinantec also has ballistic syllables, apparently a kind of phonation. Grammars are published for Sochiapam Chinantec, and a grammar and a dictionary of Palantla Chinantec, example phrase, ca¹-dsén¹=jni chi³ chieh³ ‘I pulled out the hen. Chinantec-language programming is carried by the CDIs radio stations XEOJN, broadcasting from San Lucas Ojitlán, Oaxaca, and XEGLO, broadcasting from Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca

14.
Mixe languages
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The Mixe languages are languages of the Mixean branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family indigenous to southern Mexico. According to a 1995 classification, there are seven of them, the four that are spoken in Oaxaca are commonly called Mixe while their two relatives spoken in Veracruz are commonly called Popoluca, but sometimes also Mixe. This article is about the Oaxaca Mixe languages, which their speakers call Ayuujk,133,000 people reported their language to be Mixe in the 2010 census. A few thousand of the 41,000 who reported their language to be Popoluca are presumably Sayula Popoluca, Oaxaca Mixe languages are spoken in the Sierra Mixe of eastern Oaxaca. The following classification is from Wichmann, syllable nuclei are notoriously complex in Mixe, varying in length and phonation. Most descriptions report three contrastive vowel lengths, there are multiple values of phonation, one being the typical one. The other types of phonation have been variously termed checked vowels, creaky voice vowels, some Mixe variants are vowel innovative and some, notably North Highland Mixe, have complicated umlaut systems raising vowel qualities in certain phonological environments. The morphosyntactic alignment of Mixe is ergative and it also has a system which serves to distinguish between verb participants in reference to its direct–inverse system. The Mixe verb is complex and inflects for many categories and also shows a lot of derivational morphology, one of the parameters of verb inflection is whether a verb occurs in an independent or dependent clause, this distinction is marked by both differential affixation and stem ablaut. Unlike Sayultec Mixe, Mixe languages of Oaxaca only mark one argument on the verb, Mixe shows a wide variety of possibilities for noun incorporation. The Mixe noun does not normally inflect, except that human nouns inflect for plural, noun compounding is a very productive process, and the profuse derivational morphology allows for creation of new nouns both from verbs and from other nouns. Mixe languages are have SOV constituent order, prepositions and genitives precede the noun, but relative clauses follow the noun. The example below is from Lowland Mixe, mixe-language programming is carried by the CDIs radio station XEGLO, based in Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca. Agustín Quintana Dieterman, Julia Irene,1995, Participant reference in Isthmus Mixe Narrative Discourse, thesis in linguistics presented to the Faculty of the Graduate school of the University of Texas at Arlington. Hoogshagen, Searle & Hilda Halloran Hoogshagen,1993, Diccionario Mixe de Coatlán, Schoenhals, Alvin & Louise Schoenhals,1965, Vocabulario Mixe de Totontepec, Serie de Vocabularios Indigénas Mariano Silva y Aceves Num. Wichmann, Søren,1995, The Relationship Among the Mixe–Zoquean Languages of Mexico, ISBN 0-87480-487-6 Online resources for Mixe of Chuxnabán by Carmen Jany Bachillerato bilingüe Mixe de Tlahuitoltepec

15.
Zoque language
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The Zoque languages form a primary branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family indigenous to southern Mexico. They are spoken by around 70,000 indigenous Zoque people, the Zoques call their language Ode püt. Zoque-language programming is carried by the CDIs radio station XECOPA, broadcasting from Copainalá, there are about 100,000 speakers of Zoque languages. 63,000 people reported their language to be Zoque in the 2010 census, an additional 41,000 reported their language to be Popoluca, probably 90% of these are Sierra Popoluca and thus Zoque. The Relationship Among the Mixe–Zoquean Languages of Mexico, ISBN 0-87480-487-6 Sierra Popoluca Collection of Lynda Boudreault at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains audio recordings and transcriptions of Zoque and Soteapan in a range of genres. Some files are restricted but may be available upon request

16.
Popoloca language
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Popoloca is an indigenous Mexican cluster of languages of the Popolocan branch of the Oto-Manguean language family, closely related to Mazatec. They are spoken by 18,000 in Puebla state, Mexico, the Ethnologue distinguishes seven varieties of Popoloca as separate languages. However, these fall into four groups with 75% mutual intelligibility or greater, eastern Popoloca Southern Northern Central Popoloca Coyotepec Western

17.
Tlapanec language
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Tlapanec /ˈtlæpənɛk/ is an indigenous Mexican language spoken by more than 98,000 Tlapanec people in the state of Guerrero. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, it is tonal and has complex inflectional morphology, the ethnic group themselves refer to their ethnic identity and language as Mephaa. Before much information was known about it, Tlapanec was either considered unclassified or linked to the controversial Hokan language family. It is now considered part of the Oto-Manguean language family, of which it forms its own branch along with the extinct. Mephaa people temporarily move to locations, including Mexico City, Morelos and various locations in the United States. These share mutual intelligibility of 50% between Malinaltepec and Tlacoapa, though Acatepec has an 80% intelligibility of both, the Azoyú variety is the only natural language reported to have used the pegative case, though it is verbal case like other case markers in Tlapanec. SIL description of Tlapanecan languages Listen to a sample of Acatepec Mephaa from Global Recordings Network

18.
Cora language
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Cora is an indigenous language of Mexico of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the group that is widely known as the Cora. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state Nayarit which is named after its indigenous inhabitants, Cora is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Under the Law of Linguistic Rights it is recognized as a national language along with 62 other indigenous languages, Ethnologue distinguishes two main variants of Cora. There are significant differences between some of these varieties and some sources distinguish between Cora Mariteco, Cora Presideño, Cora Corapeño and Cora Franciscqueño, but Ethnologue considers the mutual intelligibilitiy between these and Meseño to be high enough to classify them as a single language. Cora de Santa Teresa has such a low degree of intelligibility with other Cora speech communities that Ethnologue considers it a separate variety. Due to recent migrations a small community of Coras exists in the United States in western Colorado, Cora is spoken in a number of dialects, some of which have difficult mutual intelligibility. ISO distinguishes two languages, INALI nine, the Taracahitan group of languages containing among others the languages Tarahumara, Yaqui and Mayo is also related to Cora. Uto-Aztecan Coracholan branch Huichol language Cora languages The phonology of Cora is typical of southern Uto-Aztecan languages, with five vowels, however atypically of Uto-aztecan languages, Cora has developed a simple tonal system or pitch accent with an harmonic accent taking high falling tone. Cora is a language, its grammar is agglutinative and polysynthetic, particularly inflecting verbs with many affixes. There are a number of clitics that can also be used as relational nouns. Nouns are marked for possession and exhibit several different plural patterns, different classes of nouns mark the plural in different manners. The most common way is by means of suffixes - The suffixes used for pluralization are the following, -te, -mwa, -mwaa, -tse, -tsi, -kʉ, -sʉ, -se, -si, -ri and -i. Other ways to form the plural is by reduplication of the vowel of a noun stem or by shifting the accent from one syllable to the other. Another class of works form their plurals by suppletion, possessed nouns are marked with a prefix expressing the person and number of their possessor. The forms of the prefix expressing first person singular is ne-, na-, or ni-, the third person singular is marked by the prefix ru-. A first person plural possessor is marked by the prefix ta-, second person plural by haamwa-, one, -raan is used to mark an obviative or fourth person possessor. The other is used to mark a plural possessum of a singular possessor

19.
Huave language
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Huave is a language isolate spoken by the indigenous Huave people on the Pacific coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The language is spoken in four villages on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the southeast of the state, the Huave people of San Mateo del Mar, who call themselves Ikoots, meaning us, refer to their language as ombeayiiüts, meaning our language. In San Francisco del Mar, the terms are Kunajts and umbeyajts. The term Huave is thought to come from the Zapotec languages, meaning people who rot in the humidity, however, Martínez Gracida claims the meaning of the term means many people in Isthmus Zapotec, interpreting hua as abundant and be as a shortened form of binni. The etymology of the term requires further investigation, neither of the above etymologies is judged plausible by Isthmus Zapotec speakers. Although genetic relationships between the Huave language and several families have been proposed, none has been substantiated. While Huave is still in use in most domains of life in at least one of the four villages where it is spoken. Recently, fieldwork and revitalization projects have been carried out in the Huave communities by universities of different countries, as of 2011, it is reported that teenagers have taken to texting in Huave, so as to be able to communicate without their parents knowing what they are saying. Also as of 2011, a station in San Mateo del Mar. Huave of San Mateo del Mar is partly tonal, distinguishing between high and low tone in penultimate syllables only, Huave is one of only two Mesoamerican languages not to have a phonemic glottal stop. The phonemic inventory, reconstructed for the ancestor of the four existing Huave varieties as presented in Campbell 1997, is as follows, Consonants. Huave is similar to the Mayan languages in being both morphologically and syntactically ergative and consistently head-marking and it is less morphologically complex than Mayan languages, however, and usually each word has only a few affixes. There are obligatory categories on the verb of absolutive person and present, past or future tense, plus additional categories of subject, indefinite subject. Complex sentences in Huave often juxtapose multiple verbs each inflected for the appropriate person, an interesting feature of Huave is that verbs meaning give can be used to produce causative meaning, whilst a verb meaning come is used to produce purpose clauses. There are other purpose clauses introduced by more ordinary particles in which the verb is inflected for a special subordinate mode, word order, like verb morphology, in Huave follows a fully ergative pattern. The basic word order can be expressed simply as Ergative Verb Absolutive. This means that whilst in transitive clauses the order is AVO. Adjectives and demonstratives can be placed either before or after the noun to which they refer, reduplication is a very productive phonological process in Huave

20.
Pame language
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The Pame languages is an indigenous language of Mexico spoken by around 10,000 Pame people in the state of San Luis Potosí. The Pame language belongs to the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-manguean language family, the third variety, Southern Pame, was last described in the mid 20th century, is assumed to be extinct, and is very sparsely documented. It was spoken in Jiliapan, Hidalgo and Pacula, Querétaro, Northern Pame Central Pame Southern Pame The Pame languages are part of the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean language family. They are most closely related to the Chichimeca Jonaz language spoken in Guanajuato together with which they form the Pamean language groups, in the colonial period two grammatical descriptions were written. Berthiaume reports a complex phonology for Northern Pame with contrasts between plain, voiced, aspirated, and glottalized consonants both for the stops, nasals, affricates and approximants, Pame languages are tonal but the exact number of tonal contrasts is a matter of debate. Avelino, Gibson and Manrique have analyzed the language as having three tones, high and low tones and a falling contour tone. But Berthiaume argues that there are only a high and a rising tone - with no low level tone, Pame grammar is characterized by complex morphophonemics and suppletion - many grammatical categories are marked by exchanging consonants in patterns that are not fully predictable. The morphology is headmarking, marking agreement with possessors on nouns and its personal system distinguishes between singular, dual and plural number in all person categories, and also has an exclusive plural first person category. Pame has a counting system, as the Pame keep count by using the four spaces between their fingers rather than the fingers themselves. Pame-language programming is carried by the CDIs radio station XEANT-AM, based in Tancanhuitz de Santos, a phonological grammar of Northern Pame. The typology of Pame number systems and the limits of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area, Gibson, L. F. Pame phonemics and morphophonemics. International Journal of American Linguistics,22, 242-265, international Journal of American Linguistics 45, no. Análisis preliminar del vocabulario pame de Fray Juan Guadalupe Soriano, castañeda, L. M. Dos gramáticas pames del siglo XVIII. Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, sexta época,11, tratado del arte y unión de los idiomas otomí y pame, Vocabularios de los idiomas pame, otomi, mexicano y jonaz de Fray Juan Guadalupe Soriano. The Handbook of Middle American Indians, ed. by Robert Wauchope, general editor, Norman McQuown, volume editor, vol

21.
Huastec language
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The Wasteko language is a Mayan language of Mexico, spoken by the Huastecos living in rural areas of San Luis Potosí and northern Veracruz. Though relatively isolated from them, it is related to the Mayan languages spoken further south and east in Mexico, according to the 2005 population census, there are about 200,000 speakers of Huasteco in Mexico. The language and its speakers are also called Teenek, and this name has gained currency in Mexican national and international usage in recent years, the now-extinct Chicomuceltec language was most closely related to Wasteko. The first linguistic description of the Huasteco language accessible to Europeans was written by Andrés de Olmos, wasteko-language programming is carried by the CDIs radio station XEANT-AM, based in Tancanhuitz de Santos, San Luis Potosí. Huasteco has three dialects, which have a depth of no more than 400 years. It is spoken in a region of east-central Mexico known as the Huaxteca-Potossina, western —48,000 speakers in the 9 San Luis Potosí towns of Ciudad Valles, Aquismón, Huehuetlán, Tancanhuitz, Tanlajás, San Antonio, Tampamolón, Tanquian, and Tancuayalab. Central —22,000 speakers in the 2 northern Veracruz towns of Tempoal, eastern —12,000 speakers in the 7 northern Veracruz towns of Chontla, Tantima, Tancoco, Chinampa, Naranjos, Amatlán, and Tamiahua. Ana Kondic reports only about 1,700 speakers, in the municipalities of Chontla, Chinampa, Amatlan, Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía, e Informática. 2005 Mexican population census, last visited 22 May,2007 Ariel de Vidas, “Ethnicidad y cosmologia, La construccion cultural de la diferencia entre los teenek de Veracruz”, in UNAM, Estudios de Cultura Maya. Vol. “Maya linguistics, Where are we now. ”Vol.14, pp. 187–98 Dahlin, “Linguistic divergence and the collapse of Preclassic civilization in southern Mesoamerica”. Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, “Archaeological and linguistic correlations in Mayaland and associated areas of Mesoamerica, ” in World Archaeology. Vol.8, pp. 101–18 Malstrom, V.1985, “The origins of civilization in Mesoamerica, A geographic perspective”, in L. Pulsipher, ed. Yearbook of the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers. A sketch of San Luis Potosí Huastec, San Luis Potosí, A Teenek Profile, Summary. El idioma huasteco de Xiloxúchil, Veracruz, méxico City, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. “La costa del Golfo y el area maya, Relaciones imaginables o imaginadas. ”, in UNAM, “The origins and development of Huastec pronouns. ”3, pp. 294–314 Sandstrom, Alan R. and Enrique Hugo García Valencia. Native peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico, “Los indios huastecos”, in Ochoa, L. ed. Huastecos y Totonacas. Ethnogenesis of the Huastecs and Totonacs, phD dissertation, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Tulane University, New Orleans. Huasteco Collection of Barbara Edmonson, an archive of recordings of narratives, words, and rituals from the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

22.
Kickapoo language
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Fox is an Algonquian language, spoken by a thousand Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States and in northern Mexico. There are three dialects, Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo. If Kickapoo is counted as a language rather than a dialect of Fox. Extinct Mascouten was most likely another dialect, though it is scarcely attested, most speakers are elderly or middle-aged, making it highly endangered. The tribal school at the Meskwaki Settlement in Iowa incorporates bilingual education for children, in 2011, the Meskwaki Sewing Project was created, to bring mothers and girls together with elder women in the Meskwaki Senior Center sewing traditional clothing and learning the Meskwaki language. Prominent scholars doing research on the language include Ives Goddard and Lucy Thomason of the Smithsonian Institution, the consonant phonemes of Fox are given in the table below. There are eight vowel phonemes, short /a, e, i, o/ and long /aː, eː, iː, other than those involving a consonant plus /j/ or /w/, the only possible consonant cluster is /ʃk/. By the 1960s, however, a progression of phonological changes had taken place, resulting in the loss of intervocalic semivowels. Besides the Latin script, Fox has been written in two indigenous scripts, Fox I is an abugida based on the cursive French alphabet. Consonants written by themselves are understood to be containing the vowel /a/. They are l /pa/, t /ta/, s /sa/, d /ša/, tt /ča/, の /ya/, w /wa/, m /ma/, n /na/, K /ka/,8 /kwa/. The characters d for /š/, tt for /č/, and 8 for /kw/ derive from French ch, tch, vowels are written by adding dots to the consonant, l. Fox II is a alphabet, though according to Coulmas /p/ is not written. Vowels are written as cross-hatched tally marks, approximately × /a/, II /e/, III /i/, IIII /o/. Consonants are + /t/, C /s/, Q /š/, ı /č/, ñ /v/, ═ /y/, ƧƧ /w/, 田 /m/, # /n/, C′ /k/, sac and Fox Nation Sauk language Kickapoo language Kickapoo whistled speech Voorhis, Paul H.1974. Introduction to the Kickapoo Language, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, international Journal of American Linguistics 3, 219-32. Meskwaki Language - Alphabet OLAC resources in and about the Meskwaki language OLAC resources in and about the Kickapoo language

23.
Amuzgo language
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Amuzgo is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca by about 44,000 speakers. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Amuzgo is a tonal language, from syntactical point of view Amuzgo can be considered as an active language. The name Amuzgo is claimed to be a Nahuatl exonym but its meaning is shrouded in controversy, multiple proposals have been made, a significant percentage of the Amuzgo speakers are monolingual, the remainder also speak Spanish. Four varieties of Amuzgo are officially recognized by the governmental agency and they are, Northern Amuzgo, Southern Amuzgo, Upper Eastern Amuzgo, Lower Eastern Amuzgo. These varieties are similar, but there is a significant difference between western varieties and eastern varieties, as revealed by recorded text testing done in the 1970s. Three dictionaries have been published for Upper Eastern Amuzgo in recent years, for Northern Amuzgo, no dictionary has yet been published, yet it too is very actively written. Lower Eastern Amuzgo and Southern Amuzgo are still not well documented, while the Mixtecan subdivision may indeed be the closest to Amuzgo within Oto-Manguean, earlier claims that Amuzgo is part of it have been contested. The dialect presented in the chart is Upper Eastern, as spoken in San Pedro Amuzgos as analyzed by Smith & Tapia. The following chart is based on Coronado Nazario et al. for the variety of Southern Amuzgo spoken in Huixtepec, the phonetic facts are very similar to that of other varieties, but the analysis is different. In this analysis, the nasals and central approximants have distinctive allophones that depend on whether or not they precede a nasalized vowel, the approximant /w/, which is before oral vowels or consonants in Huixtepec, is before nasalized vowels. The approximant /j/ is likewise nasalized before nasalized vowels, and elsewhere, the nasals are pronounced with an oral non-nasal release when they precede an oral vowel, and as such sound like in that context. Various other important details about the phonetics of Amuzgo are not presented in a chart such as the one shown above. Amuzgo distinguishes seven vowels with respect to quality, in all the documented dialects, all but the two close vowels may be nasalized. Some descriptions claim that Amuzgo also has ballistic syllables, a type of supra-glottal phonation. Ballistic syllables are also a feature of the phonology of another Oto-Manguean branch, Amuzgo has three basic tones, high, mid, and low. But it also has several combinations of tones on single syllables, the contour high-low is a common one. The following words are distinguished only by tone in Huixtepec, /ha/ sour, /ha/ I, /ha/ we. See also the set, /ta/ hill, /ta/ thick, /ta/ father, nouns are pluralized by a prefix

24.
Chochotec
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Chocho is Spoken by 770 speakers. Chocho is a tonal language distinguishing low, mid and high tones, Carol Mock argues that Chocho distinguishes morphosyntactically between subjects of willful actions whether they are transitive or intransitive and subjects of unwillful actions. This results in her analysing Chocho as an active–stative language, the patient/subject of an intransitive active/voluntary phrase is marked by the same suffix. D-ą́tʰē-má aspect-fall-first. person. exclusive. active I fall This morphosyntactical alignment would imply Chocho being a Split-S type Active language. However, some verbs can use either the active person suffixes or the inactive enclitic. Mock, Carol C,1982, Los Casos Morfosintacticos del Chocho, ELAR archive of Preliminary Documentation and Description of Chocholtec

25.
Minority language
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A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities, some minority languages are simultaneously also official languages, including the Irish language in Ireland. Likewise, some languages are often considered minority languages, insofar as they are the national language of a stateless nation. In 1992, Council of Europe adopted European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to protect and promote historical regional, the signatories that have not yet ratified it as of 2012 are Azerbaijan, France, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, and Russia. In Canada, the minority language is generally understood to mean whichever of the official languages is lesser spoken in a particular province or territory. Minority languages are occasionally marginalised within nations for a number of reasons, support for minority languages is sometimes viewed as supporting separatism, for example the ongoing revival of the Celtic languages. Immigrant minority languages are also seen as a threat and as indicative of the non-integration of these communities. Both of these threats are based on the notion of the exclusion of the majority language speakers. Often this is added to by political systems by not providing support in these languages, speakers of majority languages can and do learn minority languages, through the large number of courses available. It is not known whether most students of minority languages are members of the minority community re-connecting with the communitys language, or others seeking to become familiar with it. There is a difference of views as to whether the protection of official languages by a representing the majority speakers violates or not the human rights of minority speakers. g. Sign languages are not recognized as true natural languages even though they are supported by extensive research. Speakers of auxiliary languages have also struggled for their recognition, perhaps partly because they are used primarily as second languages and have few native speakers, Macedonian - Macedonian is not recognized as minority language in Greece and Bulgaria. Bulgarian - recognized minority language in the Czech Republic, not officially recognized as minority language in Greece, albanian - recognized minority language in many countries including Romania, but not recognized as a minority language in Greece - where 4% are ethnic Albanians. Polish - recognized minority language in the Czech Republic, not officially recognized as minority language in Lithuania. Serbian, official in Serbia, co-official in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, and minority status in Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Romania. The minority status in Montenegro is controversial since the majority of the population declared Serbian as their mother tongue and it has no official status in Northern Catalonia, France. Galician, 3-4 million speakers, regional official status in Galicia, welsh,622,000 speakers, regional official status in Wales, UK

26.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south

The Mixtec , , or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of …

Turquoise mosaic mask. Mixtec-Aztec, 1400-1521 AD

Plate 37 of the Codex Vindobonensis. The central scene supposedly depicts the origin of the Mixtecs as a people whose ancestors sprang from a tree.

The stucco reliefs in the Tomb 1 of Zaachila (The Valley, Oaxaca) reveal a remarkable influence from Mixtec art. It is likely that the tomb belongs to a person whose name is registered in the Nuttall Codex. Tomb 1 of Zaachila, Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Late Postclassic.

The Constitution of Mexico, formally the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States (Spanish: Constitución …

Cover of the original copy of the Constitution

Venustiano Carranza, leader of the victorious faction, convoked the elected body to draft the new constitution.

The new constitution was approved on 5 February 1917, and it was based in the previous one instituted by liberal Benito Juárez in 1857. This picture shows the Constituent Congress of 1917 swearing fealty to the newly created Constitution.

Revolutionary general Plutarco Elías Calles was a fierce anticlerical. When he became president of Mexico in 1924, he began enforcing the constitutional restrictions on the Roman Catholic Church, leading to the Cristero War (1926–29)